How Young Children Impact Our Marriages

For most couples, marital satisfaction plummets after couples bring home a baby. Sleepless nights and fights over whose turn it is to change diapers can leach the fun out of a relationship. The absence of downtime and inability to remember niceties causes unforeseen stress and negative feelings. What are the most common ways children impact our marriages? And how can we lesson the impact of all this child chaos and the effect it has on our relationship with our spouse? Today we’re discussing the secrets to successfully navigating these stormy waters.

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Episode Transcript

Parent Savers How Young Children Impact Our Marriages Episode 142, July 29th, 2016

[00:00:00]

Please be advised, this transcription was performed from a company independent of New Mommy Media, LLC. As such, translation was required which may alter the accuracy of the transcription.

[Theme Music]

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Studies show that marital satisfaction plummets after couples bring home a baby. Sleepless nights and fights over whose turn it is to change diapers can leach the fun out of a relationship. The absence of downtime and inability to remember niceties causes unforeseen stress and negative feelings. Today we're discussing the secrets to successfully navigating these stormy waters. This is Parent Savers.

[Intro/Theme Music]

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Welcome to Parent Savers. Parent Savers is your online on the go support group for parents with toddlers. I am your host Alicia Gonzalez. Thanks so much to our loyal listeners who join us every time a new episode is released and for those of you who continue this conversations on Facebook and twitter. Make sure to check out our Parent Savers app so you can listen to all of the episodes wherever you go. Here is Sunny with details of how you can get involved with Parent Savers.

SUNNY GAULT: All right, hi everybody, so real quickly I wanted to plug the fact that we are now as part of our show, we have a segment that we do that is all about listener feedback and we are starting to incorporate iTunes reviews into this segment. So iTunes reviews are really important for us because it is how other people find out about our shows. A huge portion of the amount of people that listen to Parent Savers initially find out about us through iTunes.

If you are one of those people and you happen to be in iTunes or perhaps you are using the podcast app through iTunes, it just takes a couple of quick clicks and you can actually go into the ratings and reviews section. First you would find the parent savers podcast if you are not on our own native app and you would go to the ratings and reviews section and you could rate us out of five stars.

If you leave a comment we will take that comment and we will talk about it in a future episode and you will become internet famous because that is what happens when we talk about people on the show. Anyway we just want to give props to the people that are out there that listen to the show that really do benefit from it and again it’s just a great way for parents to find out about Parent Savers, so please leave us a review in whatever platform you are listening the show in.

I will start, I'm Elisha. I have hosted a couple of episodes so far. As you know I have four children, two girls ten and eight, two boys six and four. I definitely have experience with children having an impact on my marriage, so I'm excited about the conversation today and I'm looking forward to learning too. With us of course is Sunny.

SUNNY GAULT: Yes, hi. I'm Sunny and I'm producing today's show. I have four kids, I have my oldest is five, he will be six next month, that's a boy. Then I have another boy who is four and then I have twin girls who are two and a half. Having lots of kid’s boom, boom, boom is perfect for our marriage. It totally is like when you are in the vows. I have an experience with this and excited about the conversation as well.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Also with us today is Quentin Hafner

QUENTIN HAFNER: Hi, I am Quentin and I am 39 years old and I'm married to an awesome wife named Hilary and we have a three year old son named Levi and a soon to be baby boy that is expected about two weeks from now. This topic is super relevant to me because this is what I work with every day in my practice as a therapist and also personally too because having our son totally unrivalled our marriage, we are still trying to get out feet back on the ground.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: By trying this whole thing again, right?

SUNNY GAULT: Exactly, if at first you don't succeed

QUENTIN HAFNER: May be there is something that we can do different

[Theme Music]

SUNNY GAULT: All right, before we dive into our conversation today we have a segment that we call “what up with that?” And it is where we talk about the funny things that our toddlers do that make zero sense on planet earth, but on planet toddler I'm sure it makes tons and tons of sense.

We just like to share these experiences and be like I feel you, I get you, I do not know why these toddlers do these things, so here is one and I kind of understand. This one I have to admit more than others, this one comes from Tracy and she says "I would have to say that his pension for setting up elaborate car scenes with a multitude of hot wheel cars is both incredibly creative and mildly disturbing. No car is ever seriously hurt and no vehicle is left behind though so I take that as a good sign that he has a good sense of empathy."

I know we all have boys here, I know Quentin your kids are a little bit younger although your three year old maybe be playing with hot wheels little bit. I know this is a big deal on my house, almost six year old loves cars and his brother does too and they love to like build this kind of elaborate things with his blocks and they think they are garages or something and they line up this cars and you know before I know it I hear this elaborate like crash scene in the other room [scream] and I'm like oh no that’s like really gruesome and gross. I don't know if I should ran out there and be like no no no, it’s like bumper cards, it’s okay, I don't know what to do.

I'm sure I'm not the only person that has to deal with boys and cars, right?

ALICIA GONZALEZ: No, not at all. I'm the same way. My boys love them and they do the big crash scenes but their cars seem to have personalities like the movies

SUNNY GAULT: Oh that's kind of cool

ALICIA GONZALEZ: So having this big elaborate they have hundreds of hot wheels and they have this big elaborate setups and scenes and there is multiple things going on and so we just recently moved and the stair wall off the living room, of course with four boys we gave them the big huge living room for their play room and take the little tiny room for the living room. But under the stair walls its open so that's where they laid out their car mats so that they can set up this tons and we don't have to clean them up. They can just keep it going 24-hours a day but I do hear the same thing like oh no, he's in trouble, he's in time out and he's dead because he landed on him.

SUNNY GAULT: Quentin any experience with this with your three years old?

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes I was thinking and what comes to my mind now is my son at the age where he wants to play cars with me but every time I am holding the car and he is holding the car well somehow his car always ends up smashing my car and my car has to fall on the ground. So that's how we do it, lots of games cars, smashing mine and we do that over and over and over.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Can I ask why and there is no reason, just because it’s yours? Like there is no reason for this, it just gets smashed because that is what you are here for.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: What about all those articles that say don't always let them win?

SUNNY GAULT: I did read something, what was the magical age? May be Quentin has some idea on this but I did read when it comes to, remember that episode we did Elisha about board games, it had to do with that and is like letting your kids win, I want to say it’s up to age five or six they say it’s okay as long as they know that you are letting them win and then after that point it’s not okay, it’s like you are doing them more harm than good. Quentin have you heard of anything like that?

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes I have and I think the way I understand that is it depends on the children's competency level at the age they are playing the game and what kind of game so if they have the capacity to succeed a little bit on their own then you want to let them feel the success and then also feel the failure too. If they are not developed mentally ready for that then it’s like okay you get to win.

SUNNY GAULT: I think three is young enough age where you can just let them win and it’s okay. My car dies all the time. All right well Tracy thank you so much for sending this and if you guys have a “what up with that?” story that you want to share with us please let us know. You can send us an email through the website at www.newmommymedia.com and you can also post it to our Facebook page, send smoke signals whatever just let us know, we are everywhere online, so give us a shout.

[Theme music]

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Today we are talking about how young children impact marriage. Our expert today is Quentin Hafner. Quentin is a marriage and family therapist in Orange County and father of one and one on the way, welcome Quentin.

SUNNY GAULT: Is that one and a half?

QUENTIN HAFNER: I think we can say one and 7/8th right now

SUNNY GAULT: Yeah that’s true because you have like two more weeks to go

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes, we probably have less than two weeks.

SUNNY GAULT: That's baby is ready just waiting to come down

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Okay, so let's jump right in. What would you say are the most common impacts that children have on marriage?

QUENTIN HAFNER: Let's see, the most common impacts well, what comes to my mind with that question is in two parts. Impacts on marriage with young children, I think statistically may be I will share a couple of statistics with you guys that I feel are not very commonly known.

Marital satisfaction is at an all-time low if you have a child under the age of five living in the home. Across the marriage life cycle that is what could be expected. 92 % of all couples report fighting at their worst upon arrival of baby or introduction of a baby into the marriage. Infidelity increases dramatically with the introduction of a baby into the marriage.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Really?

SUNNY GAULT: By whom, does it break it down male versus female?

QUENTIN HAFNER: Interestingly it’s almost fifty-fifty, it’s like 55:45 heavier rated for men but its close enough to being even.

SUNNY GAULT: That surprises me

QUENTIN HAFNER: Surprising a lot of people don't think of it like in pop culture we kind of think of infidelity as a guy’s thing but it certainly isn't.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Plus with a young child just having the energy

QUENTIN HAFNER: Another statistic is that 40% of all divorce will happen in the first ten years of a marriage life cycle so the average American family has two children roughly the ages of seven and five at that time. The saddest statistic that really jumps out to me is that 20% of all children will live in single parent homes by the time they can walk so roughly the first twelve months of life. I think in our culture it is this weird taboo topics where just generally speaking we love our babies, we love the image of the family experience but the reality is that having a family and having young kids puts an enormous amount of stress even in the best relationships and a lot of couples are left really feeling out of sorts.

This is something I feel really passionate about talking about and helping people feel more empowered with knowledge and a greater understanding and even almost like normalizing a lot of their experience because I know like when my wife and I had our son we went through a hard time and we were both like gosh is it supposed to be this way? Is this like us? Is there something wrong with us? I think that is a common sense myth that a lot of people feel like there must be something wrong with us.

I think talking about this and making it a more transparent topic is really just better for everybody because people can start coming out of the closet if you will so that they can be like yeah, I'm really experiencing this too and I just think for so many people they feel a lot of shame about having a hard time particularly in this time of their life.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: I totally agree, I love the idea of bringing it out in the open and you mentioned something, when I first talked about the common impacts, the first thing that I thought of is the difference between the fantasy that you think it’s going to be and the reality when it hits. The fact that when we were growing up there wasn't Facebook but everyone still put on that in front of closed door type thing like this is our perfect family, you don't know what went on behind closed doors but Facebook has kind of exacerbated that by everything being so positive about the experience and everything and when really every day you are wondering if you can just get through to the next evening when you can work on sleep

QUENTIN HAFNER: It is so true I think my experience of talking with couples in this life stage is really that confusing feeling just like wait a minute this is supposed to be one of the happiest time of our lives because we are a budding family and we doing this really cool thing. But emotionally its feelings of tasking like those feelings such polarizing experiences. The reality of the stress and the difficulty of having young kids but this kind of idealization of what it’s supposed to be like or what we want it to be like and then those two kind of frames of mind are really just at odds with each other and then people just end up shutting down and they don't want to talk about what's real.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Of course lack of sleep is critical which leads us to how would you say sleep deprivation plays into all of this?

QUENTIN HAFNER: You know I think about like sleep deprivation, I think you guys can really chime in on this too just being moms. I think that sleep deprivation is kind of more like a shorter term challenge for this like process and of course it certainly is a big deal and I don't want to minimize it at all, in fact our son in particular he did not sleep through the night until he was like two and a half years old

ALICIA GONZALEZ: I have one of those

SUNNY GAULT: Oh my goodness

QUENTIN HAFNER: He still really struggles even at three and we've done literally everything to try and get him to sleep. So I think the sleep journey with him was particularly tasking for my wife and I. I think there is even things like even bigger that happen for couples in this life stage that really go beyond sleep deprivation.

I think sleep deprivation is one of those things that we hear a lot about, we talk about a lot but like I will give you some ideas of things that I feel are even bigger than that. Are like how peoples identities change a lot when we become parents mostly first time parents you know there is like this idea like before we have kids we are just husband and wife and then when we have kids now we have to incorporate this identity of being mom and dad, and try to find balance with like the identity of being husband and wife.

It's kind of like the pie is limited it's not infinite and so if we have to add the dad and mom identity to the pie well something gets forsaken and usually it's our spouse identity so it's kind of how do we balance that.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Is that because we are holding tightly on to our self-identity so that the spouse identity gets impacted?

QUENTIN HAFNER: I think that usually like very stereo typical general and I know for a lot of people out there this won’t feel applicable but just for the sake of talking about it I think what happens for many couples is that I will give you like the thirty second version of the relationships dynamic so it's like husband and wife they are feeling really connected and then along comes a baby which is like a third and then what happens is mom because super attached to baby because that makes sense and that is a developing necessarily for a baby health’s.

Then dad feels left out he feels an important and an needed and so what does dad do he goes to work and he finds a lot of his value a lot and a lot of his identity and competency and fulfillment in his career and then over time as he is in that place mom starts to feel more disconnected more alone and if it is not going well mom stays really engrossed with baby even longer than probably what is necessary because a lot of her fulfillment and a lot of her identity comes from being a mom.

Then so you have mom and this is like a massive general association and so I know it's not like this for everybody but then so for at the end of that kind of story you have mom with so much of her value that is wrapped up with being a mom and then you have dad who is who has so much of his value and his identity wrapped up in his career and then that is the kind of like the bad story of the typical American family that doesn’t make it.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: So what advise do you have for parents that space where there are trying to split up those roles of responsibility's my story is a little bit different it's similar issues but different setting which I can get in to but starting with you what advice would you give to someone in that situation.

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes I think that you know the first thing that I would say to a couple that is in that is in a stage life that might be going through a hard time. It is just that you are not alone but if there is something I want someone to take away is that everybody seems to be struggling with this and yet so few people really want to talk about it. So it is like just know that you are not alone, there is such great help and resources out there to help people in this life stage and there is no shame in asking for help.

There is no shame and saying hey we need help navigating this. One thing that happens so much for couples is that with that kind of scenario that I just described, you kind of become ships in the night, were you are emotionally disconnected from each other and yet you are just cooperating with this kind of roles.

That would be any of us having a lot of big feelings about that so what I would encourage people to do is just start talking about that so we have to come back to the table and we start talking to each other and making the implicit explicit really talking about what it this we are needing, what is it we are missing and finding that bond again because if we don't that sharp downward slope on marital satisfaction for the first five years of a baby's life we have to get that shock downwards slope corrected and moving back up.

With time by itself usually it doesn’t heal that, we have to be a little proactive than just like kind of buy in time and wait till kids go to grade school.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: I think that is a great point, the time that it takes that effort, it’s so hard to come up with that energy to make that effort but it’s so important. I was lucky I had a hard time after my first because it was so much more difficult with this baby, she was high energy, she needed to be held all the time and I just couldn’t do it, I just don't have that in me.

I thought I had unlimited patience until I had this new born who needed something every second and so luckily my husband took on more of the role of parenting at that time. Even when he went back to work after a few weeks as soon as he would walk into the door the baby would be in his arms and she would be there for hours because I just couldn't do it anymore. Knowing how hard it was for me to do that all day for him to that in the evening I was so grateful for that. It turns out for us we were a little different, that bond was strengthened because where I couldn't jump in he did. Where I couldn't just do any more he was there.

I remember there were a couple of days where I called him at work, a couple of hours before he was supposed to be done and I said I can't do this anymore today, like I need someone to come take over and he would leave right then and come take the baby. That's pretty major so I never lost sight of the effort that he was making and so that made me give the effort to communicating and keeping that honest and open communication going.

SUNNY GAULT: My situation I guess is a little different. I struggled with like I can’t have these roles intersect. For me it has to be like either I'm in mom mode or I'm in wife mode or I'm in Sunny mode. I have a really hard time blending them and that is really unfortunate because I feel like 24 hours a day I am there for my kids. So really my wife role and my Sunny role you know, just me being me is nonexistent.

I don't why, I don't know if other people have an easier time blending these roles. It is just really hard for me to be a wife and a mom at the same time. I have to compartmentalize a little bit more, like it’s hard to been really loving with my husband when I'm really loving with my kids. I don't know, it’s very difficult for me to blend everything.

QUENTIN HAFNER: Sunny I'm kind of like you in that sense too that in my mind I compartmentalize as well and so I have learnt that for me to really have a meaningful connection with my wife it has be to baby free and that makes it uniquely challenging in its own way. It is something that I talk a lot about with the couples that I see.

I talk about how we have to be able to navigate these three big groups of time. The three big groups of time and these are all critical by the way that I think to have a successful and healthy life we can't give up any one of the three and it’s like our individual alone time, it’s our family time and it’s our couple time. We have to make space I think and be intentional about finding room in our lives to have those three big moments of time.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: My husband is really good at blending everything and so where I need that separation I have to come to terms that it is not going to happen because he can be a dad, a husband, a friend everything all at once and I don't have that ability. I think part of the difficulty I had with not having the patience I did was I thought I was failing and then which meant I was failing as a mom and a wife and everything I had promised and all of that and so it’s a tough road to navigate.

QUENTIN HAFNER: Something too so different in our like modern times and you guys know this too because I'm sure you talk about it a lot but two hundred years ago all of us would have been living in agrarian rural society and you know if you are getting overwhelmed with babies you just hand it off to your sister, your niece, cousin and like the whole idea that as individual families we are trying to raise babies and do the family life. In essence we are really trying to do it in isolation because very few of us live in those extended family supports like really deeply. Like for our family my mom watches our son like one day a week that is about the best that we can get. It is more a challenge today before because people having to do it by themselves and I think we need a lot of help.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: I agree, definitely. Thank you so much when we come back we will talk about a new trend called pre-baby counseling.

[Theme Music]

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Welcome back today we are talking about how young children impact marriage. Quentin a growing number of mental health professionals are starting to advise couples to undergo pre-baby counseling, what do you think of that?

QUENTIN HAFNER: I think that is such a good idea. I wish my wife and I were in therapy when we got pregnant. Truly, it’s like there is something about getting pregnant adding a third person to the dynamic that just changes so much. I think it is an awesome idea, what do you guys think?

SUNNY GAULT: We did pre-marriage counseling, it’s kind of the same thing right before we got married we were like okay what is this marriage thing going to be like? Okay, so let’s learn about that.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Did you do pre-baby? That is interesting that pre-marriage counseling is so much common this days and I have never heard of pre-baby counseling before we started looking into this topic.

SUNNY GAULT: I hadn't either and so how does that work, what happens there?

QUENTIN HAFNER: Well I tell you guys kind of this is like a funny thing okay, so I used to give like a marital talk for all the expecting couples at Hog Hospital, that's just the hospital here at Newport. If you are delivering at the hospital they have all these classes like in the department that you can go to and so I used to give this marriage talks talking to expect ting couples like hey this is how your relationship is going to change and this is kind of what I want you guys to think about, this is good stuff to talk about. It was like crickets, nobody cared what I had to say.

They were like who is this guy reigning on our parade, they were so excited to have a baby and they were so excited to be in that process that they were not like really in a place where they wanted to hear about anything that might be challenging in the future and I like totally get that.

It makes so much sense because it kind of just goes back to what we were saying earlier about how it’s probably in all of us that we have an idealistic view of the family experience and like gosh, I don't know if I really want to talk about it like it being hard or things happening to my moods

SUNNY GAULT: It’s almost like you are jinxing it

QUENTIN HAFNER: Totally it’s like I don't do that talking anymore, I just say you know what, just have the baby and a year from now

SUNNY GAULT: Come and see me when you need me.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: That leads me to the next question I wanted to ask what would be the main piece of advice you want to give parents that are in the midst of feeling the impact of small children on their marriage.

QUENTIN HAFNER: I would just say you know my strongest encouragement is just to get help, that is what I think is like the big thing. If you are feeling the strain, if you are feeling the tension you know like I said earlier it’s like the big secret, so many people are feeling that and that people don't want to admit that or talk about that, so just know that you are not alone in it and getting help could have marvelous transformative effects to the way you feel about yourself individually and about your relationship.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Absolutely, that's great advice.

SUNNY GAULT: For moms and dads that end up needing some counseling after their kids are born, would you say most of it just a handful of sessions to kind to get back on track and then they can figure it out or is this something that you really recommend regular counseling for just to make sure you stay on track, what do you see happening here?

QUENTIN HAFNER: That's a really great question and I think it really depends on the couple. I can tell you that my personal philosophy is that I see my therapist us somebody that my wife and I would probably see until he dies or we die.

That is just how I see his role in my life, I see his role in my life as being like it has transitioned from being therapist to almost more of like a mentor. Some people really don't want they are not looking for that or they can’t afford that and I totally respect that and so for some people it’s more shorter term it’s really kind of solution focused. So like a couple is trying to resolve like a particular issue and then they find their therapy and they find resolution with that particular issue and they kind of move on into the world, and that is all fine.

It just depends on what people are looking for, how they think about all these, just what people are after so it can vary from person to person or from couple to couple.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: It seems that it is just a matter of finding what your best fit is for you and whatever is going to be successful whether it is long term or short term or may be every time a new issue comes up then you do another short term however your situation allows.

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes that's kind of the way my wife and I do it, we kind of hope in and out of therapy like six months in six months off something like that. I don't really have great role models from like a parental figure of what it means to have a healthy marriage. So I just think that I need someone to guide me and show me how to do it and thankfully my wife feels the same way about her parents situation so we both like approach it with a total humbleness and like a total sense of openness so that is great for us.

SUNNY GAULT: That's so funny you said that because my situation is the exact opposite, like I had such good role models for parents growing up that I feel I should be able to handle this. My parents are just great and they have a fantastic relationship and there have been some bumps here and there but they work it out. I have seen them work it out and so when I get to that point where I'm frustrated beyond belief, I just feel like gosh Sunny why can't you figure this out like you had such good role models like you should be able to handle this and not let it get out of control. It’s interesting that you came to it from the opposite perspective because I feel guilty when I can't handle it because I had good role models.

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yes, that's tough because it sounds like it’s almost like you have an expectation that you've placed on yourself to know how to do it like right. I don't know, I just feel like when I take a look at you know I live in this stuff all day long because this is what I do for work but the statistics of marriage are just like not that good. It is depressing and I hate to be the bearer of the gloomy news but it’s like 55% of all marriages are going to end but that's like the never brainer right? That is not even interesting to me.

What is more interesting to me is what do the other 45% look like? I can tell you statistically that of that 45%, roughly 30% of those marriages those are not happy marriages. Those are not marriages that any of us would want. Those are people staying together because of the kids, for finances, for religious reasons, all sorts of things but they are not the couples that we see from time to time and we go wow I want that marriage.

It leaves us with like 20% of all marriages are kind of doing okay or doing good, right? Isn't that kind of crazy? Because of that and because I have a really strong personal value that marriage is really important to me and it’s really important for me not to just do it but I really want to do it well, I approach it with like just total sense of awe and curiosity and I just want to learn.

I think a lot of my clients are always surprised when I tell them I'm in therapy and they are like oh gosh you are in therapy, you are supposed to know how to do it and I'm like I have to practice what I preach, like I want do it even be better and so I want you guys to do even better to. I don't think it’s one of those things where we like finally get it. When we think we finally got it that's when we are lost.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Or go back to therapy

QUENTIN HAFNER: Yeah, my wife is always changing on me she won't stay the same

SUNNY GAULT: I saw this headline not too long ago, within the last six months and I can't remember the exact information it had in it. But it was something like parents if you looked at all of them, the parents that had three or more kids were more happy than the parents that had only one or two, have you heard of that?

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Oh my gosh

SUNNY GAULT: What is behind that? I don't understand. You think that the more kids the more crazy right?

ALICIA GONZALEZ: Unless the rest of the kids are so split that the older can help with the younger ones, I listen to you Sunny but I disagree. The only advantage I see to this is out of four someone is going to take care of me when I get older.

QUENTIN HAFNER: What you are going through you tell them to be doing that.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: One of my kids is going to make it and buy me a big house when they are older

SUNNY GAULT: Right, someone is going to do something great

ALICIA GONZALEZ: We always think about that way like what possessed us to have all these children especially in the midst of like chaos like bed time when you just want to sort of ran away from the house and let them fend for themselves.

SUNNY GAULT: Do you dread, I dread the whole dinner, birth, bed. I'm like oh my goodness is it already that time of day again?

ALICIA GONZALEZ: I know, it comes so quickly when I get home from work, all of a sudden it is that time.

QUENTIN HAFNER: My wife is usually like whose turn is it to put him to bed

SUNNY GAULT: When you get to have like three and four you know like Elisha and I, you have to divide and conquer. No one gets out of duty, you take this two and I’ll take this two.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: My husband is an angel, he's always been the bath giver. I can't like I said the patience thing, I can't do bath but then as soon as bath is done I'm on it, yelling its bed time.

Thanks so much everyone for the conversation and to everyone listening for joining us today. For more information or if you want to learn more about our expert visit our website at www.newmommymedia.com . This conversation continues for members of our parent savers club. For more information about the parent savers club visit the member’s portion of our website.

[Theme music]

SUNNY GAULT: All right, so before we wrap up our show today we have another segment that you guys can participate in. It’s called “parenting oops”. So it’s where you guys share you funny parenting stories and things that went completely wrong and this is a funny one and it comes from Julie. She wrote “I always want my kids to keep their hands to themselves in the store so they don't break something. One day we were in a cosmetic store where I was testing the sample lipsticks. As I begun to twist one up it broke off and fell between the shelves. Not wanting to draw attention to myself I quietly placed the lid back on and moved away. I did purchase something else though, when it was finally our turn to pay, my seven year old said don't forget to pay for the lipstick you broke mom. Boy was I embarrassed and busted."

Those honest little buggers

ALICIA GONZALEZ: My oldest is like the most honest child ever even to this day and there are so many times where something like that especially in a store something will happen and I will say okay we are just going to ignore that and we will stand at the till and he would be like are you sure you want to ignore that mommy? Are you sure mommy? And I'm looking to her like I'm going to put duck tape over your mouth. She's gotten that look so many times and still doesn’t even budge. Are you going to tell them though, are you going to tell them that you did that? I would say why do you have to do that?

SUNNY GAULT: And you are trying to be a good role model right, so you don't want to cross the line and like teach them something bad or whatever but sometimes you know is okay, right? Maybe that’s what we tell ourselves as parents.

Anyway Julie thanks so much for sending this in. If you guys have a funny parenting oops story please let us know or send us an email, reach out to us through our website, We do have the voicemail option on our website so all pages of www.newmommymedia.com , we have this gray banner on the side that says send voice mail so if you click that you can use the micro phone right through your computer and you can send it to us that way, you never even have to pick up a phone.

ALICIA GONZALEZ: That wraps up today’s episode of Parent Savers. Thanks again for joining us! We appreciate you listening! Don’t forget to check out all our sister shows on our New Mommy Media Network, we’ve got:

• Preggie Pals for expecting parents • The Boob Group for moms who breastfeed their babies • Newbies for those going through it for the first time • Twin Talks for parents with multiples.

This is Parent Savers! Say it with me, SUNNY GAULT: empowering new parents!

[Disclaimer] This has been a New Mommy Media production. The information and material contained in this episode are presented for educational purposes only. Statements and opinions expressed in this episode are not necessarily those of New Mommy Media and should not be considered facts. While such information and materials are believed to be accurate, it is not intended to replace or substitute for professional, medical advice or care and should not be used for diagnosing or treating health care problem or disease or prescribing any medications. If you have questions or concerns regarding your physical or mental health or the health of your baby, please seek assistance from a qualified health care provider. SUNNY GAULT: How would you like to have your own show on the New Mommy Media network? We are expanding our line-up and looking for great content. If you are business or organization interested in learning more about our co-branded podcasts, visit our website at www.newmommymedia.com. [00:38:49] [End of Audio]

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